As I sit here at the airport, I am conflicted with both sides of this coin. On the one hand, we are encouraged in life, as men, not to waver; to make decisions and take responsibility for the results of those decisions. Making a decision wasn’t a difficult task for me in the past, I knew what I wanted and I went after it.

On the other hand, things are never so simple, as it always turns out. My unabated wants created a conflict and what I got wasn’t what I wanted at all. I quickly learned that goals and aspirations have their place, but just as they may help you grow, they may also hinder and detract. So here I sit about to depart on a wonderful journey, and at the same time about to be further from what I want most.

So I am faced with the toughest test of patience I have ever met, possibly the largest I’ll face in the rest of my life. And even as the wonder rolls in, I realize the benefit that will come from this experience: that in pushing ourselves and those we love to what seems unnecessary and unexpected methods of assuring each others feelings, we can wind up with even more certainty than we could have imagined possible. The inconvenient, even selfish, initial actions teach us, change us for the better, and create a certainty of what we really care about in life, what is most important to us. This quote says it well:

“Borders were meant to be crossed and redrawn. It is all part of the growing process.”